This is literally just a minute’s walk from my house. The noise they were making all day was pretty horrible, and you could hear it for miles around. I heard that Top Gear were going to be doing some filming but they didn’t say it’d involve F1 cars.

Top Gear is a complete load of rubbish anyway, so I’ve no interest in hearing the same tired old jokes about MK being a concrete jungle, blah blah blah…

I had my fill of F1 engine noise at the YDT. It’s not an especially pleasant sound when ruinously hungover on a Sunday morning, let me assure you.

Actually, if I’m totally honest, as a lifelong motorsports fan and regular race attendee, I’ve got to be honest here and say that I think that F1 cars are absolutely horrible sounding even at the best of times. Really unnecessarily shrill and high pitched. I appreciate I’m probably in a minority of one here, but I just think there are way way better sounding race cars out there.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love the noise of a racing car, I just think there are way better sounding cars out there. it’s why I’m always baffled to see people moan that the noise is going to be significantly changed by the change in engines for next year – to me, the noise of an F1 car is one of the bits I like least. Bernie and co go on as if this is a really fundamental part of F1, but in terms of loudness they’re no different to any other top end race car really. It’s just the pitch of the engines which I find is like nails down a blackboard. I guess if F1 is your only experience of seeing racing cars in action then you’d probably feel like the loudness was something unique to F1, but it really isn’t.

@fastiesty You should get yourself down to Santa Pod one weekend. Then you’ll learn what real power sounds like :)

@mazdachris – I agree tha, trackside, F1 car noise can be overpowering. I always wear ear defenders. However, on the TV, it’s very different, I would personally classify it as highly enjoyable and at the end of the day, more people watch F1 on TV than go to the races.

And Santa Pod weekends are my idea of hell on earth – mainly because they fill up our A&E department with all manner of madness and keep me busy!